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Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

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Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#91

Post by MattGaiser »

foolfoolz wrote: post #87
as1mov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird issue honestly. I've been on reddit for almost a decade, and I don't like what it has become. I would love to switch to a better alternative, but the problem is any alternative that pops up seems to be filled with extremists as soon as it starts. This doesn't imply that anyone who wants to leave reddit is a neo-nazi, a lot of us are stuck with reddit because everything else is filled with shit.

there’s extremists on every platform

There is poo on every surface. The key question is the amount of poo relative to the other stuff.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#92

Post by hadrien01 »

Deimorz wrote: post #83
hypersoar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat was created intentionally and specifically for the (mostly far-right) trolls too unsavory for Reddit. So, if Lemmy is not that, it'll have a head start.

No it wasn't. Voat was originally "Whoaverse", a reddit clone that the developer created as a school project. He literally copy-pasted the HTML/CSS from Reddit and then started gradually rebuilding some of the backend in C#. You can see the original version in the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20140427060403/http://whoaverse.c... He tried to get people to use it for a while, but since it was just a les…

I believe the first migration to Voat wasn't for a subreddit ban, but when upvote/downvote counts on comments became hidden

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#93

Post by ralusek »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #51
raldi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only redditlike sites that outcompete Reddit are ones with more moderation (e.g., HN), not less.

Moderation should be similar to a database view. I would love a browser extension and backend store like Lemmy that posts to both the site I’m on but also Lemmy (each site would be a distinct “namespace”). What is a forum but a collection of post identifiers with a corresponding tree of comments. If a mod removes, hides, or takes other mod action on a comment or post, the browser extension and federated storage syste…

Yes. Even just the existence of different subreddits with different moderation policies is already close to a perfect solution.

I don't understand why people are so hellbent on getting subreddits that exceed their tolerances removed from the platform. There are orders of magnitude more subreddits that I ignore altogether than the ones that I choose to subscribe to.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#94

Post by snapetom »

badRNG wrote: post #43
hypersoar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat was created intentionally and specifically for the (mostly far-right) trolls too unsavory for Reddit. So, if Lemmy is not that, it'll have a head start.

This seems to be the outcome of all of these Reddit clones, even the ones made with the best of intentions. Take for instance Ruqqus, another site created as a free speech reddit alternative. It consistently has horrifying content on the front page regularly; viciously racist content, anti-Semitic memes, unironic pro-Nazism/pro-genocide discussion posts, and generally terrible content. This is likely because it is ex…

Ruqqus is nowhere near as bad as voat is. Moreover, in threads, they are well aware of what happened to voat. They know they have to walk a line between free and open speech and not devolving into a haven for nazis and racists. However, the best way to help them is for more sane users to participate in that community.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#95

Post by xupybd »

kiba wrote: post #61
detaro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that all alternatives have to be "free speech = allowing abuse" alternatives? E.g. a large subset of Fediverse (Mastodon etc) communities are communities that avoid Twitter because they don't feel Twitter is doing enough to be safe for them. And instances have a varying policies about how they handle instances with different moderation standards.

All good alternatives will have rule, thus moderation. Where does the line between "free speech" and moderation exists?

The problem is access to platforms. We haven't found a good way to do this. People should be free to opt in or out of the content they want. What offends one will not offend another. For example a thread on hunting will offend some who love the animals they hunt. There is no universal right or wrong there. On should have access to an online community the other should have the ability to disagree or avoid that community. The problem is when an organisation like Twitter picks a side that free speech becomes an issue. Only because of the monopolistic nature of the platform. But that's what makes the platform good, everyone is there.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#96

Post by zackees »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Reddit is infiltrated with corporate sock puppet accounts. A documentary has been made about it. Any reddit that supports Trump and becomes popular get's dismantled. A good example is the the_donald, who's moderators were kicked out and the community had to leave.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#97

Post by philipkglass »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Most of the arguments about social media content policies center around American politics, but Reddit has been banning other potential lightning rods for controversy. They banned DarkNetMarkets, Deepfakes, and SanctionedSuicide in 2018. They banned WatchPeopleDie last year [1].

It's not hard to see why Reddit would ban any of these, but at some point there may be a critical mass of too-controversial-for-Reddit content that isn't just interesting to the Voat crowd. Is that point now? I'll have to wait and see how Lemmy turns out.

The other theoretical advantage of a federated service is that smaller instances are less expensive to run than one big centralized service. There are a lot of people who could afford to run a service on a $10/month VPS as a hobby but who couldn't afford to run anything at actual Reddit scale without corresponding revenue. That's important considering that Reddit leavers are more likely to be posting not-safe-for-brand content even if it's not specifically hateful content.

[1] Not a sub I ever visited, but by most accounts surprisingly non-toxic as a community, considering the subject matter.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#98

Post by jka »

holidaygoose wrote: post #64
MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

My guess would be that attention-seeking and disruptive behaviours are part of the explanation.

In a forum with ten reasonable conversation threads and one highly controversial one, attention is likely to move towards the controversial topic.

The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conversations alike.

It also doesn't help that engagement (regardless of reason for engagement and any human stress created as a result; they're harder for software and metrics to capture) tends to be seen as something to optimize for, both within companies themselves and also by their investors.

Controversial conversations are sometimes necessary. People who repeatedly raise controversial topics to gain notoriety or attention are generally not - although their behaviour may be a sign that they need help in other ways.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#100

Post by as1mov »

foolfoolz wrote: post #87
as1mov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird issue honestly. I've been on reddit for almost a decade, and I don't like what it has become. I would love to switch to a better alternative, but the problem is any alternative that pops up seems to be filled with extremists as soon as it starts. This doesn't imply that anyone who wants to leave reddit is a neo-nazi, a lot of us are stuck with reddit because everything else is filled with shit.

there’s extremists on every platform

Agreed, but at least reddit is unique in that it seems to get accused of being accused of both kinds of extremism, Tumble/Twitter/HN seem to think it's a right wing shithole, while the 4chan/Imageboard ilk thinks it's a leftie propaganda machine.

That's not the case with the alternatives, most tend to go really hard on one side of the extremism scale (right: voat, left: raddle).

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